Separating Crunch and Fluff at Character Creation

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I think I am with her on this one. There is a lot to be said for letting a character concept guide choices. And to be honest, she has not totally gimped herself... the beguiler is a very strong class that does not need a prestige class. Spell focus is a very good choice for a beguiler because their spells all tend to require saves and are clustered in a few schools.

And beguilers as a class are masters of not getting hit. She gets spells like greater mirror image, halt, and hesitate , for example -- all immediate action spells that let you avoid having to make that fortitude save in the first place.
It's not like she is trying to play a low CON barbarian!

Ken

 

[MadMaxim]

Oh, I'm not saying that her character is unplayable or that the beguiler is a bad class, it's just specialized much like a specialist wizard in enchantment and illusion. I'm not saying that you need to over-optimize your character. I'm just saying that I don't think you need crunch to match your fluff down to the last detail. You can play a weak character with just a low Consititution and a class that has a slow Fortitude save progression without going to extremes. A -3 penalty on a Fortitude save is pretty severe in my book either way.

What I'm saying is pretty much how EroGaki put it: Having an optimized character doesn't have to mean your character has the personality of a piece of cardboard whereas having the greatest personality for your character doesn't stop you from having an optimized character. My (semi-optimized) fiend-slaying cleric doesn't have to be any less interesting than her (less optimized) sneaky beguiler. I'm just saying that one doesn't exclude the other.

As to what we'll be facing I've heard that there'll be something for everyone, so I think we'll run into something poisonous and something with nasty diseases at times.

 

[Thundershield]

While aware of the phenomenon, I had no idea it had a name. Thanks, EroGaki.

Anyway, a character should be made by the person with the concept for it (which is most often the player). And while advice from other players can be nice, unwanted advice rarely is. A DM might point out to a player that there will be issues with a given concept or choices in character creation (such as playing a Mage in a non-magical setting or picking stuff from banned material or ignoring house rules), but beyond that the player always has the last call on what choices they make about designing their own character.

It seems to me more like you two were stepping on each other's toes. You can both have perfectly fine fluff for your characters. That's not influenced by the mechanics (or at least shouldn't be) and only your own imagination should be a factor here. What seems to be more of an issue might be that one character will be a powerhouse and the other less so, meaning there might be some spotlight-hogging or combat dominance issues, or even issues with the DM scaling encounters for one character or the other, since they're on different power levels.

At any rate, you're both free to make your characters as you like. Respect the other player's choices and see how it works out. Should you have some of the issues I mentioned here, work it out with your DM, but just keep respecting player choices. After all, as long as nobody's making decidedly unplayable or overpowered characters, there shouldn't be any mechanical problems.

 

[pawsplay]

I like the idea of working from a background, and that's what I do sometimes. The problem I see with this person's character is that they don't have a lot of focus.

- Meager fortitude? Unless the character is Elric or Raistlin, that's probably overdoing it. Simply not taking a Fort boost and not having a great Con is probably sufficient.
- Spell focus can wait. Why does this character concept require a +2 DC on saves of a certain school? Sounds like a little min-max creeping in... "My beguiler is so beguiling she never fails."
- Obtain familiar could probably wait, but if she really wants a familiar, this should be the 1st level feat.
- I don't know what she spent her other bonus feat on, but I'll bet it wasn't exciting compared to -1 AC.

Rather than a case of crunch vs. fluff, I see this as more a case of the Mechanical Trait Fallacy: Every important trait must be represented by a mechanical ability. It seems like focusing on the familiar, then building up other feats as she leveled would be a more balanced approach than trying to front-load the character with a bunch of feats. The end result is actually not a great RPG character, rather, a caricature.

The other part of this is conceptual. It's perfectly fine to build the character you are envisioning, but you first have to ask yourself, is the character you are envisioning a good choice? No one, no mystical force, is making you play any given character, so of all possible characters, why do you think playing a fragile, combat-unready beguiler with a familiar is the best contribution you can make to the play experience? Not only is this a selfish choice, but it can be self-defeating, as a clumsily contructed character is as likely to be unsatisfying as they are to be dead. Is it possible, again, to portray the character as somewhat fragile, rather than virtually guaranteeing the character will fail every Fort save thrown her way? In GURPS, which is all about building from a background concept, this is known as the blind berserk hunchback syndrome. While you could (with difficulty) write a novel about a blind berserk huncback fantasy hero, in an RPG, it's going to be difficult to get things to line up right for that character concept to get "screen time" and to deal with the challenges set before the group. It's not necessary for the group to successfully overcome the challenge all the time, but if the characters is not challenge-ready, it's a recipe for anticlimax as the character (and possibly party) simply get waxed by something too formidable for them.

 

[joethelawyer]

Well, I don't know anything about classes other than those in PHB 1 for 3.0. Those are the only ones we allow in our game and play with. But I can tell you that based on our experiences with those classes, it's pretty damn annoying when someone takes a class that sucks, in that it doesn't contribute much, and then dies. We had one player who tried a bard. Dead in the first encounter. So what he do? Tries another Bard. Dead in 2 hours. Then he tries for a monk. He lasted about 45 minutes. Now this guy has a half-orc barbarian. The rest of the group is a cleric, magic-user, and a fighter. It works finally.

I don't know if those choices would have worked under a better player. This one was new to the game, only been doing it a couple years. But I can tell you it was annoying as hell to deal with a gimp character.

 

[S'mon]

It depends on what kind of game the PC is going to be in. In a typical combat-heavy gamist campaign like most published modules and adventure paths, the PC needs to be viable, though perhaps not as single-mindedly min-maxed as you imply. In a game focused on roleplaying and character development, her approach is fine.

Personally, as a GM who runs pretty combat heavy games, I wouldn't be very comfortable with either of your approaches, but yours is probably easier to deal with.

Edit: That said, the Beguiler is apparently a very powerful class, so she may be making a perfectly viable PC anyway.

 

[Greg K]

While roleplaying and optimizing are not mutually exclusive, I am with her. I'd rather have a character like hers in the games that I run than an uber-optimized character Then again, when I run, setting and background considerations (i.e., fluff) are important factors in player's desiging characters. Therefore, I'll make accomadations for the non-optimized characters- the uber-optimized character end up paying for being overly specialized.

And on the topic of optimizing, I would argue that she is optimizing as she is making the numbers fit her background concept. She just does not appear to be power gaming (based on the OPs comments) by uberoptmiizing to get the highest possible numbers.

 

[pawsplay]

While I couldn't be certain without looking at her background sheet, I am going to suggest that the PC is not optimized for roleplaying purposes, for reasons I outlined above.

 

[JoeGKushner]

If she's taking flaws for extra feats, then where is she being less of a power gamer? She's just tweaking what her tweaks are in the name of the game.

At times like this, I wonder... why not go Hero or GURPS?

But outside of that mental note, what does it matter? Unless she's fubaring the whole party, to each their own.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I, too, think that a PC design should flow from the fluff, and the crunch should follow...in general. Sometimes, finding a mechanic you want to exploit can be just as rewarding (like my mage-brute http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/223891-mage-brute-build-help.html).

So...I'm kind of with her on this one. It sounds like a nice concept well designed within the ruleset. While I haven't done one like that in D&D, I HAVE done such in HERO- it can be quite fun.

If someone asks me for help, I'll give it to them. As to unsolicited advice? Well, I'm pretty free with my advice, but if I see that it isn't welcome, I shut up and move on.